There's a lot happening here, what a wide ranging post! Thanks for stimulating the mind. I'd separate aging research from attempting to solve Alzheimers, PD, c

There's a lot happening here, what a wide ranging post! Thanks for stimulating the mind. I'd separate aging research from attempting to solve Alzheimers, PD, cancer, and other maladies. Cancer is ever-present, sorry to say but most people who read this have some small amount of latent cancer growing slowly. Maybe we will harness the immune system and new powerful drugs and techniques to remove cancer more and more effectively, until it becomes like infectious disease: a threat to all, but usually treat-able. For aging research, however, we're in a different realm. Assuming someone didn't die from any common malady or old-age related ones, let's say they live to 105. What's likely to kill them then? Well, it could still be cancer, but it could also be solve-able issues like falling and breaking a hip (we could invent machines to prevent or lessen damage from falls). It could be cardiac events, strokes, things where the cardiovascular system has been through so many "duty cycles" that the parts reach their expiration date. And this expiration date is where I think we'll struggle most. We need to make our hardware last much, much longer if we're to achieve immortality as biological-only entities. The valves of our heart, the vessels of our brain and heart, the operation of the lungs, the sensory organs, the kidneys and bowels: these parts need a lot of extra "lubrication" and "TLC" over our lifetimes if we're to get past the "Age Limit" which is probably around 120 years old. I'd hesitate to put too much stock into aging research at present. It's in its infancy, and until it ages to maturity, it's going to be an over-hyped area for rich people to dabble in, but I doubt 99% of people living now will ever reach escape-velocity and reach immortality.